“I have something to tell you.”

“I have something to tell you,” my grandson announced at the start of my last visit.

“What?”

He paused in his climb upstairs to his room.  “Sit down.”  He motioned toward a step.

I sat.

“Donald Trump is bad.”

“What?”

“Donald Trump is bad.  We have to fight him.”

“We have to fight him?”

“Yes.  We have to put on our superhero costumes and fight him.”

My grandson is several months shy of three years old.

“Can you hear this?”  I asked his father.

“Are you talking about Donald Duck?”  my son asked.

“No.  Donald Trump.  We have to fight him.”

So, wearing imaginary costumes, we checked the deck, the small backyard, and even peered through a space between the planks on the gate.

“He’s not here,” said my grandson.

We next searched his bookshelves, whereupon my grandson announced that he must have left.  We read a Star Wars book and built a fort.  The matter was not discussed again.

My son, his wife, and I rarely speak out loud about our political positions, since we are surrounded by people whose opinions radically differ from ours.  When we do, we don’t use full names.    So…which recently visiting relative might have formed my grandson’s political opinion for him?  Lucky the boy is a superhero and not easily frightened by what he terms “bad guys.”

 

 

The Canine Cure?

I passed a wheelchair-bound man every morning in the hallway of a facility where I worked. I would greet him with a smile, wishing him a good morning or saying hello, using his name. He would respond with, “How ya doing?” This same exchange would happen whenever I encountered him, which could be on my return trip down the hallway as little as two minutes later. He never said anything else.

One day several years into my employment, I brought one of my dogs to work. As I passed the gentleman in the hallway, my greeting was returned with, “How ya doing?” Then I heard, from behind me, “That’s a beautiful dog.” I turned. The man repeated, “That’s a beautiful dog.” I retraced my steps, letting the dog sniff the man, and watched as the gentleman ran his hands over the dog, petting her and smiling.

Thrilled that my dog had elicited such a response from this man, I realized there really was something to the pet therapy tales I had heard. I resolved to find a social service worker and let him know about this new development. Pleased that I had been responsible for a breakthrough of sorts, I watched as the man hugged my dog, then lifted his eyes to me.

“Do you work here?” he asked.

Remembering a Runt

Lex was a beautiful bundle of runt, never exceeding more than 10 lbs. During his first year, we lived in a second floor apartment with a mountain of steep steps from foyer to living quarters. Lex woke me one night whining pitifully. I discovered him on the top step, unable to go up or down. This was a pattern he would follow throughout his life, climbing down or up somewhere, including the dining room table, where he would be discovered whining and poised as if to say, “I don’t know how I got here.”

Not a lot of climbing took place in his first months with us. A snowy winter was followed by a miserable spring, cold and what seemed to be constantly rainy. The newspaper came only four out of the seven days for which I was subscribed, cutting into the supply of pee pads we used to line our “Good Boy’s” litter box. My nerves were on edge from the unending damp. I wanted to file complaints with everyone—nature, the unreliable newspaper carrier, the newspaper company itself, which replaced the missing paper only if you called by a time before I got home to discover its absence. I was even angry with the mail carrier, who couldn’t wait until he was in the vestibule to pull out the mail for the four apartments in my group. Every day I came in, drenched and miserable, to pick up a pile of mail that looked tear stained at best and dried out from a long shower at worst.

At last the broken weather healed. The first sunny Saturday, I was astonished to hear Lex racing down the steps at the sound of the mail slot opening, followed by letters falling onto the floor. Amazed, I rose from my chair to look downstairs, where Lex stood grinning, one leg raised, waiting for my praise.

Till the end of his days, little Lex couldn’t pass up an opportunity to show what a good boy he was by peeing on any paper left on the floor.

Not Your March?

Thanks to my dogs for a long walk that set my thoughts in order:

“Not my Women’s March” has joined the Babel that is my country, along with “Not my president,” “Lock her up,” and a thousand other listen-to-me’s.

It feels like the 60’s, a thought that cheered me at first. Apathy has given way to action. But, as in the 60’s, so many lines are being drawn that the sand looks like a plaid battleground. Does anyone want to accept that “some” is an alternative to “all-or-nothing?”

My friends who are pro-life want to make it clear that they were not represented on January 21, 2017. I am pro-life myself, and proved it when the choice actually arose. That doesn’t mean I want to finish my life as a 1950’s sitcom woman. I was proud to see so many men and women gathered to voice their opinions forcefully but peaceably, agreeing with part of what they said and all of their right to say it.

An acquaintance last night reposted a woman’s Facebook entry stating that women should stop wanting to do all the things a man can do. Women, the post stated, are meant to do what men can’t do. In my mind, that narrows our life choices down to giving birth and breast feeding, and not all women can do these.

It’s not uncommon for women to like being the less strong partner, to be taken care of, to have someone on whom to lean. Heck, I grew up reading all the fairy tales, too, but saw no satisfactory options for what I could become if not a princess. In real life, I was thrilled and proud when I bought my first house. I’m not sure I would have been happier if someone had bought it for me.

So, some of you disagreed with the marchers. I get it. All the hoopla about Fifty Shades made me want to scream, “That isn’t all of us!” I didn’t feel the need to organize an anti-S&M movement, though. I assumed, at least until the book’s and movie’s popularity was cited as a defense for crotch-grabbing, that everyone understood that not all of us are part of the Grey team.

I would like to suggest to women that we employ a cafeteria style set of opinions. You can be pro-life but still want equal pay for equal work. You can oppose universal healthcare but still want protections against violence. You can seek equal opportunity but oppose a wall. The operative word is “can.” Don’t let the rights we fought for be lost to a one size must fit all mentality. We don’t have to march together, as long as our path leads forward, not back.

“I didn’t do it.”

Dog walking, which I describe as taking eight steps, sniffing 400 blades of grass, then repeating for a half mile, gives one a lot of time to think.

Today’s thought: “ I didn’t do it.”

Sitting in my car at a stoplight one day, I watched a little girl carrying a water-filled balloon run up to another, much taller child and throw the balloon against her. The older child, who was facing forward the whole time, was drenched and furious. The younger child stepped backward, visibly frightened.

The expected response would have been perhaps, “I didn’t mean it.” What the little girl whine-shouted, however, was, “I didn’t do it.”

I used to think that was funny.

In this world of passionately divergent views, I’m not sure how many of us would disagree with her now.

Queen Victoria’s Holiday

Vikki escaped by an act of Nature, which allowed 78 inches of snow to fall in our city that winter. One cold morning, while barking at a squirrel, the pudgy five-year-old Pekingese discovered that she could simply walk over the top of the 40 inch fence from her perch on the snow banked in the yard.

After five anxious days, we received a call that she had been found. I raced to the Humane Society, where I was led to the Puppy Room. Inside a small tile-walled cage lay a dog that looked like Vikki. She seemed to be in good health and undamaged by her adventure, but she gave no immediate sign of recognizing me. After a long stare, she placed one paw over the other and tilted her head, looking regal and as if saying, “How good of you to come.”

My enthusiasm at her return somewhat dampened, I left the room to pay her bail. As I returned, I heard pitiful shrieks of despair. Peeking over the side wall of the cage, I was treated to the sight of a distinctly unregal  Vikki jumping, tumbling, and squealing for my return.

The Queen regained her dignity as soon as I opened the cage and connected leash to collar. As we walked to the car, we heard a choir of barks coming from the outside pen. Vikki, whose mission in life was to rule all she surveyed, immediately headed in that direction, looking as if determined to get the barking under control.

My dogs and the Roman Empire

In that hazy period between sleep and waking, I often find myself playing an odd word game in which I form words or phrases using the initial letters of groups of related items. Once, for example, I realized and was able to report to my boss that my last initial, joined with those of my fellow managers, made up the term, “Q-class.”  This did not earn me a raise.

In the same way, when my third and fourth dogs crawled up to the top of the bed to wake me, I realized that all my dogs to date had Roman numerals as initials: Lex, Vikki, Mitzi, and Indy.  I immediately calculated how many Roman numerals there are in all.

My fifth and six dogs, my current owners, came to me from a rescue group with the names, “Martinez” and “Dagmar.”  Dagmar’s initial was acceptable.  I already had an “M” dog, however, so the boy who had been Martinez for six weeks became Colin.

By my calculations, all I have left is “X.”  Ideas, anyone?

Paws a Sec